Jörg Neumann regarding reception, data, Xbox and add-ons

[kakihara123 144]

You guys are really going out of your way to misinterpret that quote. What he means is that the X-Box version will look as good as a similar speced PC (maybe a bit better since it is easier to optimise for the hardware) and the UI will be the same or very similar. Joysticks are supported as well so it should not be much of a difference to an average PC. 

Of course with High end rigs and VR PCs will have an edge. Addons are another difference, but who knows if the X-Box version will support some or not. Hes clearly speaking about the default version of the sims and I see no reason why that would not be the case.

Yeah you might not be able to build a full cockpit around the X-Box version but thats expected. 

[Brandon01110 415]

On 3/26/2021 at 6:10 PM, ChaoticBeauty said:

About the Xbox version, their goal is to make it virtually indistinguishable from the PC version

so my 3090 has no advantage?  if that is the case, I should just buy a xbox, especially if it runs without problems.

I no doubt wont do that because of all my peripherals and VR, but you get my point.  For someone starting out, this might be the best avenue.

[Tuskin38 6,887]

5 hours ago, hansb57 said:

.......as well as different animal species unique to each region.........

Yeah!!!   Bring on the burning pig and chicken farms.  

Is Asobos sponsored by the Farmers Defence Force or what??

I wonder if that's connected the fauna density slider that showed up in the last patch (not the hotfix)

  

5 hours ago, ADamiani said:

There is something sinister in it ......

No there isn't, wow.

  

5 hours ago, Scottoest said:

The sim can already be used with a controller on a PC

Exactly, so can FSX and P3D. I've done many flights in those with the X-Box controller.

FSX was even had advertisements showing people using the 360 controller.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Tuskin38

[Dominique_K 10,156]

10 hours ago, kakihara123 said:

You guys are really going out of your way to misinterpret that quote.

An accusation which is not unreasonable to make, my friend 😄  ! In apparence, we may twist a little what he says. But do we ?

First, and I cannot help myself here, sorry, I really feel for the console user if he/she gets the same version as the PC user : unstable, dysfunctional weather with an useless interface, short LOD, nerfed water,  botched turboprop, broken avionics, mesh artifacts etc . They deserve better ! 

Seriously now.

Should we give him credit for what he says ? 

The MS narrative since June of 2019 has been quite untruthful. Hype is OK to a point . It is abundantly clear that having the serious simmer in mind was the last thing on the roadmap given by Neuman to Asobo, everything screams the contrary. Their delays to correct major bugs and deficiencies in the PC version show that they barely listen to us except when there is an uproar like with the SU3 horror stories.  

Console vs PC is not only an issue of hardware but of what the user base expects. The console is a friendlier environment than the PC hardware-wise and  game-wise. The PC simmer looks for even relishes in complexity. Skyrim or Dragon Age that I love to play, are easy to play and easier to play on a  console (I suppose, I play them on a PC)). So one can be worried to read that both versions will be indistinguishable.  The trend in the past seven months smells of a laborious rewriting, of downgrading and of a reluctance to complexify the simulation.

[mrueedi 702]

2 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

It is abundantly clear that having the serious simmer in mind was the last thing on the roadmap given by Neuman to Asobo, everything screams the contrary.

That not clear at all. This page is screaming the opposite:

Flight Model Physics (flightsimulator.com)

Why would they move around the pressure center in the flight model, if they would not have serious simmer in mind? Tell me!

Has it crossed your mind, that they could aim for both user groups? Serious simmers and the xbox crowd? Have you thought, that they could have multiple focus areas at the same time? In software development you easily can have multiple focus areas. Their last big topic was VR, the next one is XBox/DX12. All while they were deeply engaged in dozens of other topics.

[Dominique_K 10,156]

15 minutes ago, mrueedi said:

That not clear at all. This page is screaming the opposite:

Flight Model Physics (flightsimulator.com)

Why would they move around the pressure center in the flight model, if they would not have serious simmer in mind? Tell me!

Has it crossed your mind, that they could aim for both user groups? Serious simmers and the xbox crowd? Have you thought, that they could have multiple focus areas at the same time? In software development you easily can have multiple focus areas. Their last big topic was VR, the next one is XBox/DX12. All while they were deeply engaged in dozens of other topics.

Did I refer to the flight simulator physics  to say that it was wrong ? No.  I do think that it is quite good except for the turboprop simulation. I am not an aeronautical engineer so I cannot judge the Microsoft presentation you quoted.  

Of course, they aim for both user groups,  This is exactly what we are talking about , they aim at two different target markets with different expectations with the same product. Did you take the pain to read and maybe understand ? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 28, 2021 by Dominique_K

[mrueedi 702]

23 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Of course, they aim for both user groups

Thats different than what you said first:

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

It is abundantly clear that having the serious simmer in mind was the last thing on the roadmap given by Neuman to Asobo, everything screams the contrary.

Truth is, that the serious simmers were the first thing in their mind (the flight model is just one of many evidences for that) and now they try to expand the potential user group by targeting xbox users too. Thats all I wanted to highlight.

Btw. teasing gamers into flight simming has nothing to do with the xbox development. It was part of the agenda for the PC version too. They were quite succesful at that. I personally know several people, who were even neither gamers nor simmers, who became MSFS users. There are a lot of aviation fans out there, who did not belong in one of these camp just a year ago. And now the bar has been set very low to try out PC flight simming for many of them. E.g. an ex FA not ever using a Windows app, that required DirectX, now thinking hard about upgrading her hardware, just to improve the MSFS experience. Thats nothing to whine about imho.

[Dominique_K 10,156]

1 minute ago, mrueedi said:

 

 Thats nothing to whine about imho.

Anybody telling me that I whine goes straight to the Ignore User trash box. Bye.

 

 

[virtuali 4,554]

13 hours ago, kakihara123 said:

Of course with High end rigs and VR PCs will have an edge

Maybe, but high PC have lots of bottlenecks and are running an OS that is not optimized for games.

The Xbox series X, ON PAPER, is quite similar to a Ryzen 7 ( 8 core Zen 2 ), and closest comparable PC GPU is the AMD RX 6800 XT which, even if it's not the absolute top of the line, is still very good, something in between an RTX 3070 and a RTX 3080, however the Xbox has the advantage of a unified memory architecture, which is all GDDR6, with 10GB used by GPU and 6GB shared by the OS/games.

The unified memory architecture is a big advantage for the Xbox, since the best DDR4 can read/write at about 30GB/s, while the *slowest* part of the Xbox memory ( the shared 6GB ) has a bandwidth of 336GB/s. The Xbox SSD can transfer about 4.8GB/s, which only PCI 4.0 can reach.

I expect the Xbox version of MSFS to excel exactly were the PC version lacks: a better usage of cores by not being "starved" by memory access and the inefficient transfer of data from RAM to VRAM, thanks to the unified memory architecture, and the presence of an SSD that is extremely fast.

On the Xbox is usually very easy to adapt the game resolution dynamically to keep a constant frame rate and use variable rate shading, which allows to use different resolutions on parts of the same scene.

And, DirectX 12 is ALL about better multi-core optimization and custom handling of resources, which is what makes it so difficult to use it ( same for Vulkan, see how much time and effort took to X-Plane to have a working non-Beta Vulkan and also P3D5 DX12 growing pains ), so I expect it to be a generally smooth experience. The good thing is, we'll get DX12 for the PC version first, with the Xbox version derived from it.

I'm fairly sure the Xbox version will be impressive, and will work just fine for most users. It's not entirely clear which limitations will have.

We know the only add-ons (other than scenery, which should be already compatible with no changes ) that will work on it will be those using either WASM or JS/HTML, since no executable modules will be allowed on the Xbox. Not clear if it will be possible to, at least, *connect* over a network to executables using Simconnect and running on a PC, like moving maps but also special devices that requires custom software, like the Saitek panels or even the Honeycomb utility that handles lights and switches. In these cases, a PC can't be surpassed in flexibility but, of course at a dear cost, especially in the current market situation, where even if you can find a GPU, you'll likely have to pay insane prices for it. Not that finding an Xbox Series X is any easier but, at least, they are usually sold at MSRP, and it's expected they might be more easily available by the time MSFS will come out.

In fact, I think MSFS for the Xbox has been delayed (which is good, since they'll have more time to optimize the PC/DX12 version first), precisely for the reason that, even if it came out tomorrow, there wouldn't a lot Xbox users to sell it to.

Edited March 28, 2021 by virtuali

[ADamiani 470]

15 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

That is nothing to be afraid of.

  

No we shouldn't.

Yes we should. After 40 years of experience with IT (I am a researcher in mathematical algorithms for A.I.)  I know that big companies reason with their wallets. 

A.

[OneOfMany 318]

1 hour ago, ADamiani said:

I know that big companies reason with their wallets. 

Yup. 7.5 billion for the Bethesda Zenimax purchase. Exclusive game pass offering deals with EA and possibly now Ubisoft. 

They are throwing $$$ into building the best game platform,and want everyone to subscribe to their gamepass service.

The peanuts (comparatively) they are investing in this title; one that will showcase their incredible autogen AI, Azure, Bing mapping, to allow the "casual" gamer/person to load up a quick fly over of some world location on their Android phone while sitting on the train to their office, or popping on their VR/AR appliance for a quick escape is the goal.

And if more complexity comes down the pipe to satisfy hard core simmers, consider it a bonus

 

Edited March 28, 2021 by OneOfMany

[mrueedi 702]

1 hour ago, ADamiani said:

I know that big companies reason with their wallets. 

You are aware that Microsoft has published several autopilot/flight simulation apps for free as open source?

ArduSoar: an Open-Source Thermalling Controller for Resource-Constrained Autopilots - Microsoft Research

GitHub - microsoft/Frigatebird: AI for autonomous soaring

Home - AirSim (microsoft.github.io)

Can you tell me, how their wallet was the reason to work on these projects?

[KevyKevTPA 46]

5 hours ago, mrueedi said:

That not clear at all. This page is screaming the opposite:

Flight Model Physics (flightsimulator.com)

That article may as well have been written in Mandarin for all I could understand of it lol...   

[Ray Proudfoot 9,074]

I’ve hidden one post where the user decided to insult a fellow member. Keep it civil or you’ll be taking a holiday.

[MattNischan 3,904]

3 hours ago, OneOfMany said:

The peanuts (comparatively) they are investing in this title; one that will showcase their incredible autogen AI, Azure, Bing mapping, to allow the "casual" gamer/person to load up a quick fly over of some world location on their Android phone while sitting on the train to their office, or popping on their VR/AR appliance for a quick escape is the goal.

And if more complexity comes down the pipe to satisfy hard core simmers, consider it a bonus

This just couldn't be further from the truth. The people I've met this week are some of the most passionate and awesome folks you could ask for, and incredible engineers. Core simmers are absolutely a massive, massive focus. But the two approaches aren't mutually exclusive.

The thing to realize is that the PC and XBox versions are incredibly simpatico. Anything that brings more revenue to the platform means more resources can be dedicated to the platform. As Jorg always says, this isn't a sprint, this is a marathon. Everything can't be done at once, but the dedication is absolutely there. Bringing us on board is just one example of that.

Of course, you don't have to take my word for it! I feel the proof will be in the pudding over the next year or so.

-Matt